


What These Hands Hold

by ButterfliesAndPenguins



Series: Siegfried/Aglovale One-Shots [4]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Contemplative, Established Relationship, Hands, Kissing, M/M, hand-holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 06:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterfliesAndPenguins/pseuds/ButterfliesAndPenguins
Summary: Aglovale sits by the fireside with Siegfried, tangling in his thoughts and in Siegfried's fingers.





	What These Hands Hold

Siegfried lounged against the shoulder of the sofa, legs curled loosely to drape over Aglovale’s lap as he sat reading his book. Aglovale was working idly, though the fireplace would frequently cast its heavy trance on him as he found himself staring for long stretches, hypnotized by the flames. His thoughts swirled hazily, mirroring the rolling embers, mulling over things that he knew had no answers and that he didn’t wish to ask. The kinds that liked to creep in after dusk and haunt like candlelit shadows. 

One of Siegfried’s hands lay resting in Aglovale’s lap. Aglovale kept his writing hand busy to appear nonchalaunt, then knotted the fingers of his left hand quietly though his partner’s. Siegfried’s hand closed warmly around his and he turned the page in his book, his glasses slipping a little. Aglovale watched to see if he would notice. He didn’t seem to mind.

The warmth between his fingers anchored his mind back to his own body. Siegfried’s touch always, _always_ had that power over him, though he had never spoken of it aloud for fear it might sever the charm somehow. It was a magic he couldn’t afford to lose. His thumb ran affectionately along Siegfried’s knuckles in a well-worn gesture between them. Siegfried squeezed back, the breath of a smile passing along his lips. He didn’t look up from his book, and Aglovale was careful to avoid eye contact, knowing that would also somehow break the spell. 

The warmth seeping through his palm spread to his head, extinguishing the brittle and troubling thoughts in a wash of peace. However, it now lapped at his attention in their place, making his letter-writing efforts purely affectative by this late hour. When his pen tried to form sentences, all it could draw from was a mind idly re-memorizing the details of Siegfried’s fingers. He accepted partial defeat and glanced sidelong at their joined hands.

No matter how well he knew every inch of those hands, they would always carry a slight unfamiliarity to them. They were so different from Aglovale’s own slender, silken, refined hands in nearly every way. The skin was coarse and uneven with callouses and scars, bearing a written history that could be read nearly in backwards order. The thickest knots highest across his palm echoed the shape of his sword handle even when it wasn’t present. Another at the apex of his thumb. There were few extra white creases that didn’t come naturally—early ghosts of splintered wood, or animal bites from his undying reckless nature. But the palm lines themselves were surprisingly shallow and soft—one of the few reminders that the man’s body was still young, despite its overuse. Aglovale wondered how they would change over time as he held those hands year after year, until he was holding the well-worn fingers of a precious old man. 

He blinked, catching himself at the rare act of assuming the future. It always felt so dangerously safe to forget his guard completely against Siegfried’s skin. Whether it was wise to allow himself to hope or not, he knew he couldn’t imagine any other future if he tried.

Aglovale turned the hand over, shifting his grip to cradle it curiously—still feigning distraction over his work, like some housecat preening. He traced his thumb over the chapped nail beds, the knuckles bearing countless healed gashes and splits, now mere thin white slivers like grooves in tree bark. He wondered if most of them were from before he had drank the dragon’s blood, and how deeply he took wounds now before they left a permanent signature after the healing magic sealed them so rapidly. Had it made him more reckless ever since? Or had a younger Siegfried simply known less reasons to wield his life with any sort of care? Aglovale’s fingers tightened their grip protectively. He thought he saw Siegfried’s eyes flit toward his own from beneath the reading glasses, but he still refused to meet them. 

Siegfried’s hand was lax and pliant, he knew the king was mulling something over, chasing a thought like a piece of cotton caught in a breeze that refused to land. He was eternally patient, always seeming to know that Aglovale’s mind was mending pieces of itself stitch by stitch, untangling himself within Siegfried’s presence. Without knowing, Aglovale’s right hand had abandoned its quill and joined his left, tracing patterns along the veins at the back of Siegfried’s hand. He blinked, dazed, feeling the fire was making his head swim all the more. He clasped both his hands gently around Siegfried’s, trying to shrug off whatever strange obsession had caused him to pore over them. But to his dismay, Siegfried was watching him quietly, as if an answer were eluding him for a question he could see at the tip of Aglovale’s tongue. 

Aglovale’s fingers curled back, wary that the spell had been broken. But Siegfried raised his hand—Aglovale’s drew back skittishly—bringing it to rest against Aglovale’s cheek. The rough, dry thumb tickled his skin, but painted an aching warmth in its wake. The sweetness of the touch from his familiar-yet-alien fingers stung at his throat and his skin longed to drink them in. Aglovale leaned into Siegfried’s palm, raising his own hand to pressing the tough fingers against his face. Siegfried’s expression finally relaxed into a smile, his eyes shining with heartbreaking fondness that Aglovale was certain he did not deserve. He allowed himself to wonder, for one bold moment—did Siegfried ever draw the same kind of comfort from him? Were there secret moments where he meditated in the darkness of his own heart and looked to Aglovale for a light to navigate him back to the surface? Were there self-inflicted wounds in his own heart that he could only safely start to mend when in his arms? He could barely imagine Siegfried—a man so steadfast in his convictions and care for others—to ever be in need of such a presence, and yet… wasn’t Aglovale meticulous in masking his own failings? Wasn’t he an expert in appearing never to consider himself wanting for anything, so that no one could dig those cavities in his life deeper? Perhaps Siegfried, unassuming as he seemed, was just using his own foreign methods to the same end. Perhaps he really did need Aglovale as much as he professed to—words which the king had always taken for hollow reassurances of affection. Perhaps there lived in Siegfried’s heart a fear just like his, of his own dependence upon the drug of his partner’s soothing presence. 

The thought, unbecoming of him as it was, stirred the embers in his mind, shifting something for the first time. When he met Siegfried’s eyes, suddenly a layer of frost in him had melted before he had ever known it was there. He realized he had always felt a tinge of resentment, even disgust, imagining one of the things he saw in Siegfried’s eyes to be pity—a feeling he could not tolerate from anyone, much less from someone this dear to him. But looking now, with the hypothesis that Siegfried’s heart might mirror his own—covered in scars and pits that were reluctant to heal—he saw something different glimmering there. Was it… empathy? The sting of seeing his own pain reflected back at him?

Oh… no. It was gratitude. Siegfried’s eyes were looking into his and whispering, _“Thank you… for choosing me. Thank you for staying. ...Thank you for letting me need you.”_

Aglovale frowned. This was so much to make room for in his mind, to shift all the tiny calculations he based his actions off of… and admittedly they could all be just a fantasy Aglovale had built within his own head. There was no real way to know what was behind his beloved’s eyes, not even after a lifetime of staring into them until they clouded with age. But the way those eyes lost themselves in his now felt true, and it seemed to reaffirm everything he’d just wondered. Aglovale sighed, knowing his mind couldn’t hold anything more for the night, or possibly for the entire week. He pressed his lips to Siegfried’s palm, still warm against his cheek, and reached out to shove Siegfried’s slipping spectacles back up the bridge of his nose with a gentle laugh. Siegfried blinked, smiling, looking impossibly like an old man who had forgotten they were there entirely. Then he looked back up, smiling with a gleam in his eye, and removed the glasses entirely, folding them and dropping them carelessly on the table, in order to leave himself a clear path to Aglovale’s lips.

He let himself disappear in the kiss. The only thing floating through his mind was the scratch of Siegfried’s calloused fingertips as they drifted over the skin of his neck to take their hold… the sweet warmth of his mouth giving way… and the music of his smiling sigh as Aglovale pulled him desperately, childishly close.

**Author's Note:**

> It's possible I spend a lot of time thinking about Siegfried's hands, and so does Ag. I like to imagine they're his favorite part of Siegfried, throughout their entire lives together.
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you also love this ship, please give a shout-out, it's lonely here. :)


End file.
